Sunday, April 05, 2009

Awakening, p2

Bethany flopped into her chair and logged into her laptop. She opened her browser and started going through her email. Her friend Jacqueline sent her a link to some video of an three year old playing a ukulele rather well, and her mom sent her daily checkup message. Her spam filter had caught most of the days deluge of unsolicited commercial bulk but one had gotten through. There was a message with the subject heading "Get Cheap Drugs NOW!" that had somehow snuck by the Bayesian filter of her webmail.

Not easily fooled, Bethany selected the spam and hit "delete forever". The spam obstinately refused. She selected it again and clicked "delete forever" again. Still nothing. She selected it again and furiously clicked the "delete forever" about a dozen times, knowing full well that one click or twenty made no difference.

The spam was still sitting in her inbox. Curiosity overtook her rage as her morning coffee began to take its effect and calm her nerves. She clicked on the spam to open it, figuring that just looking at a spam message over the web could do no harm. She opened it to see the usual misspelled, slightly improperly grammafied spam about all the latest sexual enhancement meds. Nothing particularly interesting or unusual about the spam itself.